THE MOONEY CASE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23702, 9 January 1939, Page 6

THE MOONEY CASE

The release, as recorded in the cablegrams, of Thomas J. Mooney from the Californian prison in which he languished for twenty-two years, recalls one of those chapters in American judicial history which is little to its credit. Mooney and his associate, Warren K. Billings, both well-known “ Radicals,” were accused of complicity in a bomb explosion in San Francisco which killed ten persons and injured forty others during a parade in 1916. They were convicted in spite of a strong alibi, and sentenced to imprisonment for life. Efforts to secure a reopening of the case have brought it under public attention at frequent intervals since then, and in the annals of the American courts it is entitled to figure as a cause celebre, presenting political as well as legal aspects. That the chief witnesses against Mooney perjured themselves was considered to be definitely established years ago. A Commission of Inquiry appointed by President Wilson in 1918 reported strongly in favour of reopening the case. The Law Enforcement Commission—appointed by President Hoover, with Mr G. W. Wickersham as the conviction as “shocking to the sense of justice.” The Supreme Court of California agreed in 1933 to a new trial, not a retrial on the original charge which is impossible under the State! laws, but a trial on a new and parallel charge. But contrary to expectations, which, at least outside the United States, it seemed must logically be realised, his acquittal upon this charge did not bring his release upon that in respect of which he was serving a life sentence. The courts in California continued to reject his appeals, and successive State Governors refused to concede him a pardon. A swing' of the political pendulum brought a change which has at last removed one of the notorious reproaches to United States justice. In November California elected the first Democratic Governor to take office for 45 years, and Mr Culbert Olson has carried out the promise made during his election campaign that one of his first official acts would be the pardon of Mooney. While Billings was released on parole in 1931, a year after the State Supreme Court had refused him a retrial, Mooney rejected the implied admission of guilt in that concession, and his stubbornness has now at last been rewarded. Industrial troubles in the United States have particularly affected the Pacific Coast, and the scenes attending his liberation seem to reflect aspects of his case, apart altogether from its legal features, which have brought it again more or less permanently under public notice in recent years. Not apparently without personal strain the new State Governor in California has successfully challenged the “forces of reaction,” which, it was said, were massing against the exercise of his prerogative.